Ibsen

HENRIK IBSEN was a Norwegian writer and outstanding dramatist,
whose influence spread far beyond the boundaries of his native
country. Born in the provincial town of Skien, into a
middleclass family who became poverty-stricken while he was
still a child, Ibsen began life as a typical petty bourgeois
forced to struggle for his daily bread. He started his career as
a pharmacist's apprentice in the tiny village of
Grimstad. Aloofness and independence had always been a rigid
tradition with his family, and Ibsen adhered to this tradition
through a keen sense of personal pride and a highly developed
feeling of self-esteem; but as he was constantly thrown into
contact with individuals and groups upon whom he was compelled
to be dependent, his attitude was bound to result in a strong
feeling of protest. Early in life Ibsen began to regard with
sorrow and contempt the manifestations of servility and
cowardice displayed by the poverty-stricken bourgeois toward the
upper classes. Living amid such social surroundings, and in such
a frame of mind, it was natural for Ibsen to turn radical. The
personal indignities he was made to endure--some of them
inflicted upon him by his own countrymen--and the widespread
injustice he witnessed in the world at large, compelled him to
take a stand
against his own self and to adopt an attitude of almost revolutionary aggressiveness.

The grave events of 1848 left a radically different impress upon
each of the various European sectors. The advent of large-scale
capitalism, overwhelming the self-supporting petty bourgeoisie,
became an important factor in the rise of numerous revolutionary
movements at that
time. It is significant that such a state of affairs should have also prevailed in Norway, where, for political reasons, the petty bourgeoisie occupied a predominant position and were considered the national and economic leaders of the country--much more so than in any other European state. In the near future this circumstance was to create a special place for representatives of the Norwegian bourgeoisie protesting against capitalist oppression; and it also assured European recognition to its greatest native talent, Ibsen.

We are in possession of an extremely interesting letter written
by Engels which is highly pertinent to this state of affairs.
In 1890 the writer Paul Ernst, a Social-Democrat who
subsequently withdrew from the Party, persuaded Engels to act as
arbiter in a quarrel between himself and Hermann Bahr concerning
Ibsen's treatment of the woman question. Ernst had defined Ibsen
as a typical petty bourgeois writer. Engels, however, took
exception to such loose generalizing, which, from the Marxist
viewpoint, failed of effect because it lacked
concreteness.

Engels' brilliant exposition definitely confirms the soundness of another Marxist analysis of Ibsen's work written by Plekhanov.

Ibsen's plays unquestionably voice the protest of the determined
and powerful petty bourgeoisie against antagonistic capitalist
principles--in the name of ... But here lies the difficulty. In
the name of what, and why, did this powerful petty bourgeoisie
call upon its literature for its ideal?

It is obvious that the prophets of this petty bourgeoisie had to exalt individualism, strong and fearless personality, indomitable will; these were not merely the basic virtues inherited from their ancestors of the golden age of Norwegian peasant-fishermen economics, but constituted
as well, valuable support in the bourgeoisie's active resistance to capitalist elements.

It is rather absurd to speak of indomitable will without at the
same time pointing out its goal. That goal might here have been
g moderate impulse to oppose capitalism for the sake of
safeguarding the independence of the small merchant. The latter,
however, were being systematically ruined--although more slowly
than in other countries-by the advance of capitalism; and the
petty bourgeois intelligentsia could not reconcile itself to
conservative principles--it had to elevate and idealize them
somewhat, give them a certain glamor.

This marked the beginning of endless difficulties. For the petty bourgeoisie was unable to create a single mass ideal; it had lost faith in the security of the past, it could see in the present only the increasing yielding and servility of its own class, and was unable to visualize anything constructive for the future.

On this score, Rosa Luxembourg is entirely right in saying that
Ibsen, despite his great talent, was not equipped with
sufficient perspicacity to be able to evaluate the trends of his
time, consequently his work had little concrete value.

Actually, Ibsen was a man of great idealistic impetuosity arising out of the social conditions depicted here, without any pre-arranged plan of action.

As a youth of twenty he became incensed at the spectacle of the
destruction of nations and societies. He called upon the people
to fight against tyrants, he wrote poetic messages to the
Magyars sympathizing with their struggle for independence. He
threw himself into his compatriots' battle against "Sweden, the
Oppressor." He wrote an immature, chaotic play
Catiline, dealing with the case of a slandered rebel,
which seethed with indignation. And it is with this play that he
began to meet success.

The sole ideal to which Norway would rally was patriotism. Capitalism, which was beginning to flourish in Norway, was to a certain extent interested in remaining independent of Swedish rule and Danish capital. The strong middle-class, which to this day continues to fight
for ascendancy in the state, saw in Norway's Viking past not only a basis of patriotic pride but also the seed of keen class consciousness. That is why the plays Ibsen wrote before he returned to Christiania brought him a measure of success. Such plays were: The Warrior's Barrow, Lady Finger of Ostraat, The Feast of Solhaug and The Vikings
of Helgeland.

This success brought Ibsen to Christiania and earned for him his
appointment as director of the National Theatre. The Norwegian
bourgeoisie became so convinced of Ibsen's merit as a national
bard that he was granted a pension by the state. But Ibsen's
role was a dual one. For he was not at all the poet of the upper
classes; on the contrary, he burned with indignation at the
laxness, duplicity, greed and treachery rampant about him. His
trip to Rome was far from being a poet laureate's triumphant
journey, resembled more a flight from an accursed native land.
In his Love's Comedy Ibsen for the first time openly slapped the
face of society about him; for the first time, too, he aimed a
powerful blow at a condition which stunned him--the decadence of
family life. This move brought down a storm of abuse upon his
head.

Ibsen's flight marked a new period in his life. Henceforward it was a battle for integrity and dignity--as the upper bourgeoisie conceives
these qualities--a battle against the despised servility and hypocrisy
of the middle class; a battle against everything which was undermining its strength; against the evils which the bourgeoisie beheld in its offspring and foe--capitalism.

Brand was of profound significance in that it revealed a bourgeois class consciousness, or rather, it would have had greater significance if the bourgeoisie, which had no future, could actually have been saved.

Brand is the exemplar of the man of strength and integrity, the
teacher of life who constantly admonishes everybody that
integrity is man's most essential attribute; who advocates the
avoidance of introspection and conflicting impulses. He points
to the necessity of
ceasing to shirk responsibility after it is acknowledged, and of desisting from deeds which bring remorse. He preaches strength of will: an individual's decisions must be adhered to until death; thus he will achieve the integrity demanded by the nobility of his soul, his objective powers, and his essential morality.

This is the substance of Ibsen's philosophy. As portrayed in
Brand, this ethical individual is the prototype of the
middle-class landlord. The weapon which Brand wants to fashion
is one that is familiar to this independent bourgeois. But, as
we have previously remarked, the absence of any definite program
makes of all this structure a mere empty shell.

Ibsen invariably convinces his readers. It is all the same to me what this or that particular hero does, what goal he chooses for himself, so long as he strives to attain it wholeheartedly and with undivided effort. But Ibsen's philosophy is even more futile than Kant's categorical imperative. It is the ethics of a class which holds vital power but is unaware of the part it can play in society.

One thing can never be resigned; One gift there is, a man must keep,--His inner self. He dares not bind, He dares not stem, whate'er befall, The headlong current of his Call; It must flow on to the great deep.

A certain mysticism premeates this. Every individual has a great goal of some sort to attain. What it is no one knows. Give man complete freedom and in turn let him give his impulses and his ruling passion full play: all will be well.

Thus an intellectual-idealistic aura surrounds the basic
principle of the middle class: the landlord--a king in his own
house. But Ibsen understands perfectly that this empty external
evanescence is only an ideal, entirely unrelated to actuality.
He wrote as follows:

Traverse the land from beach to beach, Try every man in heart and soul, You'll find he has no virtue whole,
But just a little grain of each. A little pious in the pew, A little grave--his father's way,--
Over the cup a little gay,--It was his father's fashion too! A little warm when glasses clash, And stormy cheer and song go round For the small Folk, rock-will'd, rock-bound, That never stood the scourge and lash. A little free in promise-making; And then, when vows in liquor will'd Must be in mortal stress fulfill'd, A little fine in promise-breaking.

Here everything is clearly revealed. Pride in the past is evident-although in Ibsen's opinion it has become nothing but empty words; and so is the realization that this past is dead.

Nevertheless the semi-mystic ending of Brand is a
direct challenge to Ibsen, as though the dramatist himself
understood the utter futility of his cause. Ibsen wants to lead
his people farther and farther ahead. But where to? He himself
does not know. And so Brand conducts his followers farther and
farther up into the mountains, the snows, the glaciers. What
for? No one knows. It is an idle picture. An` ascent to
barren heights, where no one can live, and which accomplishes
nothing. And when Brand, on his incongruous path, is engulfed by
the avalanche, he cries out:

Then suddenly, as though passing judgment upon Ibsen, God's voice is heard: "God is love."

It is as though Ibsen acknowledged that the road which Brand
traveled--a read of stupendous demands upon himself and
agonizing intolerance of the people around him--was a false
road; that in reality the lofty pinnacle of truth to which he
summoned mankind is much kinder, much more merciful, much closer
to love--which Brand scorned--than to conquest, which Brand
over-rated.

It is hard to tell whether Ibsen at that time had already begun to doubt, in his subconscious, the validity of his noble sermon. It is quite possible that in his mind and heart he knew that the weapon he had fashioned in his social arsenal was inadequate and useless. At any rate Ibsen continued to fight in its name for some time to come.

Nevertheless Brand remains one of Ibsen's positive types, while
Peer Gynt, on the other hand, is all negative.

Peer Gynt is a complex play, overflowing with fantasy, mysticism, symbolism, and allegory, but as a whole its meaning is simple. It is a picture of a man (a typical Norwegian no doubt) bewildered and tossed by circumstances, whose convictions vacillate accordingly. He manages to protect himself, but only by becoming as pliable as wax; it becomes evident then that he is like an onion which can be peeled layer by layer and thus destroyed except for the removed layers. This demonstrates that despite the many aspects which Peer Gynt can assume, he has no soul. He is like a defective button come out of the mold. He is unable to fulfill any function, he lacks that which makes a human being's life justifiable; like the defective button he must be-thrown back into the mold and recast. If there is any salvation for him at all, according to Ibsen, it can only lie in the fact that Solveig loves him, and that in her imagination, as the old-fashioned guardian of the home, he will again find the germ of his lost identity.

Thus, on the one hand, Peer Gynt is a satire against the
capitalistic spirit which had invaded Ibsen's small native
country; on the other hand, it is a poetic longing for a
monumental, grandiose assertion of the ego. It is also
something of a hope and a plan of salvation through certain
inner channels, through the enlightenment one seeks in one's
intimate feelings, at one's own fireside. All this is
undeniably permeated with pessimism, defeatism and
resignation.

In Emperor and Galilean--a play of the same huge proportions and fantastic character as Peer Gynt, a play with some utterly obscure passages--Ibsen expresses despair of ever finding a way out.

Julian is portrayed as a strong man. He carries through Brand's
plan. He maintains a firm stand against the oncoming historic
epoch,
in favor of what he deems to be a sounder system. But the epoch throttles him. In this play, this idea occurs to him frequently. Ibsen seeks to show the impotence of a great personality.

The Pretenders: A great many talented men who pretended
to the crown have been rejected, according to history. Their
claims were based on some original idea, first put forth by
them. King Haakon, however, really deserved the crown because he
had solved the problems of his time.

This thought was Hegel's.

Was Ibsen himself unable to solve the problems of his time?
What prevented him from finding a wisdom so supreme that it could not fail to become reality?

Ibsen could have achieved his end only by alienating himself
from his own class and joining the ranks of the proletariat--but
Ibsen was incapable of taking such a step. That is why he
himself could be only a pretender to the crown, a Julian
opposing advancing capitalism, a brave defender of a hopeless
state, a figure in the path of history.

The next phase of Ibsen's work is of great interest because he then occupies first rank among European dramatists. He shifts to an almost realistic technique. He writes of his times, his contemporaries, and the problems of the day. He demonstrates his mastery along the lines of the achievements of the French dramatists of the period--Augier, Sardou, Scribe, etc. But even at this stage of his creativeness--which can already be characterized as the social-realistic stage--we find certain traces of symbolism, a striving to add a dual meaning and an exhaustive, profound rationalization to the events and speeches in his plays.

Generally speaking, all of the dramas of this period evince a
spirit of protest against capitalist debauch, against greed and
vanity. Upon scrutinizing all these Bernicks, Bjorkmans and
Solnesses, one often comes to the conclusion that Ibsen, as a
strong bourgeois, was dutybound to defend the independence and
integrity that had been Brand's; yet he failed to realize that
he possessed the ethical power to condemn their ruling passion:
the lust for wealth and power. They all emerge
guilty, not because of their utter lack of principle, but rather because they are not unprincipled enough. They crush those who happen to cross them--their own people as well as strangers--crush them individually or collectively; yet this in itself does not seem to persuade Ibsen to condemn them. However, they themselves cannot bear their guilt proudly, or deny it on the ground that they have the right to do anything and everything. They seem to be victims of some sort of inner weakness, a self-abasement which eventually disrupts their entire future.

Nevertheless it would be arbitrary on this score to rank Ibsen
as an ideologist of the upper middle class. And it would be
equally incorrect to identify Brand's desire for integrity with
Nietzsche's will to power.

Nietzsche, perhaps, might have accused capitalist heroes of still retaining some vestiges of conscience. But not Ibsen.

Ibsen holds that where purely human feelings and relationships
are concerned, inhumanity is beyond the power of any man, except
perhaps some sort of moral monster who does not at all appeal to
him. In his "epilogue," When We Dead Awaken,
Ibsen--symbolically, of course--excludes even art as an excuse.
To sacrifice a woman, a living being, in order to use her as a
model, an object by which to achieve fame, is an unforgivable
crime.

Ibsen was unable to say what man's goal should be; yet, while demanding heroism, he denounces capitalism and wealth, the sordid and cynical form which heroism took at that time.

Another play of Ibsen's must be mentioned, a play which likewise
betrays his inner vacillations even on matters which he held
sacred.

To demand truth in all human relationships, to fight arrogance, to tear off all masks--are not these the aims of those members of the middle class who despise all the complications of commercial life, all the hypocrisy of capitalist civilization?

Ibsen's play The Wild Duck seems designed to illustrate these principles.

The Ekdal family lives in an atmosphere of disgusting hypocrisy.
Gregers, a Brand-like type, seeks truth above all else. Lies, duplicity, must be banished. In Gregers' opinion life will be easier for everybody once the fog of deceitfulness is lifted. But the play is written so that Gregers emerges not as a crusader for truth but as its Don Quixote. His dedication to the cause of truth only brings him more unnecessary suffering. He becomes ridiculous in his fanaticism. The conclusion which the audience draws is, one must be compassionate; deceit is sometimes a saving grace.

Does not this sound like compromise? Is not Ibsen here himself a
"wild duck," with broken wings?

Ibsen deals himself an even greater blow, perhaps, in Hedda Gabler. Realistically (as Eleanore Duse conceived the part), the play is a profound and brilliant study of a shallow, hysterical woman striving for startling effects and for chances to demonstrate her power-cowardly in the face of scandal, devoid of any interest in the constructive aspects of life, a possessive and almost spineless being. However, the demands which Hedda makes on the people around her are so reminiscent of Brand's that many critics considered that she was a much nobler character that Thea [Mrs. Elvsted], that she was a positive type personifying Ibsen's ideal woman. This confusion of the critics was not accidental. Here Ibsen seemed to direct his irony against himself. Demoniacal courage, which might do in an atmosphere culled from old Viking sagas, in our times became hideously unconvincing. But which is to be blamed: our drab and prosaic times, or people like Hedda? Ibsen does not say.

Uncertainty also issues from his remarkable play, An Enemy
of the People. In substance this play represents the
struggle of the strong, honest bourgeois against
capitalism. Capitalism arrives with a definite lie. A Municipal
Bath is being built which is not only unsanitary but actually
harmful. However, it brings in good profits. To expose the facts
about it would mean to throw many people into destitution. But
the truth must be told, and therein lies the conflict. Ibsen,
however, cannot see any definite social forces which might
support the champion of truth.

What is the conclusion? Can Dr Stockmann remain silent? No, he
must speak. Can he hope for victory thereby? No, it is
impossible. There is only the vague and slender hope that some
time in the distant future mankind will evolve; and in the
meantime one can work toward that time.

Then what is to be done? One must do one's duty and stand alone.

Of course, Stockmann is not an enemy of the people. The title is
ironical. As a lover of truth he tries to trample down a harmful
lie. But the people have no use for such love, the people are
blind and stupid, and that is why Stockmann is an enemy of the
people, an enemy of society; he is also an enemy of the masses
because he does not believe in them, because he is ready to tell
everyone: "Do not put any faith in the masses, have faith only
in yourself."

But is this wise counsel? No, it is not; it is really a product of despair--a despair born not so much of the conditions prevalent in Europe at that time--objective conditions, that is--as of Ibsen's deeply rooted bourgeois individualism and the subjective social conditions which governed him.

As time went on, Ibsen turned more and more from plays of
realistic technique to plays of an entirely symbolic character,
such as When We Dead Awaken. In this play there is
practically no action except of a very hazy sort. The dialogue
consists entirely of references to a dim, gradually-unfolding
past. The movements of the characters have no clear-cut meaning,
except by inference. Realism and symbolism were always at odds
in Ibsen, but symbolism finally emerged victorious.

This obscure technique can be laid to two causes, one positive and the other negative.

The positive cause is that Ibsen is no hack writer, nor a
playwright of popular trends. He never attempts to portray
scenes of everyday life, nor to expound some petty theory of his
own through the medium of the stage. He always has some lofty
idea which cannot be conveyed in a purely realistic manner, nor
without departing somewhat from actuality in depicting
characters or relating facts. Neither occasional inaccuracies
nor a certain measure of fantasy, nor departures
in the interpretation of facts disturbs Ibsen, so long as his original idea is realized in terms of artistic feeling; for he never forgets that the dramatist must work not with bare facts but with images.

But the negative angle is that Ibsen himself does not really
know where he is going and what he is hinting at--a circumstance
which detracts from the clarity of his symbolism. His trouble
lies not in the fact that he seeks a working language with which
to express great thoughts and feelings, and is therefore obliged
to create new words not hitherto available to him--but in the
fact that he is not certain of what he wants to say, and thus
speaks unintelligibly: let the public think there is something
important behind the cryptic language. To ascend ever higher, to
leave the plains for the mountains, to be true to one's self, to
be passionately fond of the sea--what does it all mean?
Actually, nothing.

If we furthermore consider Ibsen's constant tendency to descend from the heights to very low depths; his sudden demand, "Just give us freedom, we shall not abuse it"; his anemic pessimism; his bleak mysticism--we shall be able to appreciate the profound disappointment of the vital and active public--the public represented by the creative group--with Ibsen's dramas.

What enjoyment could anyone take in Nora, who demands that her
husband treat her more seriously without ever for a moment
stopping to think that she is as much an individual as her
husband, and that it is up to her to find her place in society?
Or in Ellida, who is infatuated with a stranger until she is
free to follow him, and who elects to remain with her husband
the moment she receives her freedom?

However, we must realize the importance of the role which Ibsen played in his day. In the first place, whenever the masses were stirred by a vague feeling of protest, or a progressive striving for freedom, or a movement of defense against the oppression of capitalism--in other words, whenever a need was felt for mildly progressive action, Ibsen was accepted as the prophet of such action. Even his uncertainty seemed constructive, for it was common to many states and many
groups, and the indefiniteness of his program made it into a sort of master-key. On the other hand, during periods of disillusionment, when the petty bourgeois of various types and walks in life, defeated in their social existence, gave themselves up to despair, they found, in such works of Ibsen as corresponded to their mood, a certain poetic vindication of themselves, a certain lofty--because so vague--metamorphosis of their own impotence into something fateful and thrilling.

Ibsen is an example of a tremendous effort on the part of
certain more admirable members of the petty bourgeoisie to
create an independent place for themselves in the face of
advancing capitalism; and he is a splendid illustration of the
utter impossibility that middle class writers--no matter how
talented--will ever achieve this aim.